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The Problem with Native JavaScript APIs

Why reliance on native JavaScript APIs leads to disadvantages

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Many features inspired by popular JavaScript libraries are now available as native JavaScript APIs in today’s powerful browsers. While that may seem convenient given all of the JavaScript you need to write, relying on these APIs will only make code maintenance more difficult in the long run.

In this report, Nicholas Zakas—consultant and former front-end tech leader at Yahoo!—provides a case study to show how different browsers can develop native APIs for the same specification and still end up with different interpretations. You’ll discover how these APIs can tie your code to specific browsers, forcing you to upgrade application logic whenever new browsers and new browser versions are released.

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Nicholas C. Zakas is a Web Software Engineer who specializes in user interface design and implementation for Web applications using JavaScript, Dynamic HTML, CSS, XML, and XSLT. He is currently principal front end engineer for the Yahoo! homepage and is a contributor to the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library, having written the Cookie Utility, Profiler, and YUI Test.

Nicholas is the author of Professional JavaScript for Web Developers and a co-author on Professional Ajax, and has contributed to other books. He has also written several online articles for WebReference, Sitepoint, and the YUI Blog.

Nicholas regularly gives talks about Web development, JavaScript, and best practices. He has given talks at companies such as Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Google, and NASA, and conferences such as the Ajax Experience, the Rich Web Experience, and Velocity.

Through his writing and speaking, Nicholas seeks to teach others the valuable lessons he's learned while working on some of the most popular and demanding Web applications in the world.